“I’ll find him.” Because whoever had killed the ratcatcher was responsible for the fire. For what happened to Meg. For all the reasons she was lost and unsafe and alone—and unable to remember that Tom was someone she loved.
The kiss clung to her, like the echoes of a haunting dream. She lived it over and over and over again, even though she wished she hadn’t lived it once.
The uneven breath on her face.
The soft lips, feathering across her own. Then pressing deeper. Tingling her skin, gaining speed like a runaway carriage.
She’d been frightened, but too many seconds passed before she was able to pull back. Before shewantedto pull back. That rankled her. Had she ever been kissed before? Had she ever been kissed by him?
“I daresay, we have quite turned you into the proper lady, have we not?”
Meg turned to Lord Cunningham’s voice.
He strode into the sunlit morning room, beaming at her, with another poetry book under his arm. He inspected her sloppy needlework with pride. “A boy riding a cart?”
Meg bit her lip against a laugh. “It is the worst rendition of a cupid firing a canon.” She pointed to the open pages ofAckermann’s Repositoryfrom which she’d copied the example. “If I ever used a needle before, I must have only darned socks.”
“Nonsense. You could never be anything but wonderful at what you do.” He pulled the needlework from her lap, closed the magazine, then settled next to her in the plush window seat. “Thus, if it was socks you darned, rest assured you darned them to perfection.”
“I fear your confidence is undeserved.”
“You deserve the moon.”
Instinctively, she glanced away—across the room, to the porcelain urns, the pianoforte, anywhere but at his face.
“Forgive me if I am presumptuous, but when I entered, you seemed rather lost in your own contemplations.” He leaned closer. “Indeed, if I do not miss my mark, you were blushing.”
Heat soared up her face. A sensation rolled across her lips. Did he know of last night? Should she confess?
“I do not suppose I could be the object of such a fluster.”
Before she could answer, the morning room door banged open. A maid rushed in, sweaty wisps of hair poking out from her mobcap, with a hand to her heart. “My lord. I am sorry, but you are being summoned by—”
“Thank you, Mary.” Lord Cunningham surrendered his poetry book to Meg. All the pleasure and easiness drained from his face as he nodded her good day, drew in air, and hurried from the room.
Meg pulled the poetry book to her chest. She may have kept last night—and the kiss—from Lord Cunningham just now.
But she was not the only one keeping secrets.
Of that, she was certain.
Meg did not see him again until dinner. All day, the abbey had been quiet. The servants, what little she spotted about, seemed somber and languid in their duties.
When Lord Cunningham scooted into his chair several minutes late, that same despondency echoed in his own face. “I trust you passed the day pleasantly?”
She nodded. “Yes.” No. She had done nothing aside from fumble through needlework she hated in a house that did not belong to her. She spooned warm soup santea into her mouth. “And you?”
His smile lifted, then drooped, all without reaching his eyes. “Certainly.”
Silence.
She finished her soup, while he took careful bites of the veal, carrots, and celery on his plate. Questions flitted across her mind. Today in the library, she’d discovered an open book on the writings of Hippocrates. The cover had been worn. The open page tear spotted. Why? What obligation, somewhere in the east wing, kept him for hours—sometimes days—and left him haggard upon his return?
“Lord Cunningham—”
“Tomorrow, I thought—”
They spoke in unison.
